New ‘Christian Retailing’ publisher Dave Condiff on the industry’s 'new day'

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How did you get into the Christian retail industry?

DAVE CONDIFF: I graduated from college with a ministries major and a broadcasting minor, and my wife, Debby, and I relocated to the Denver, Colo., area. The first job I applied for was at a place that filled supermarket racks with Christian books.

As part of that, when I would be in a town calling on the supermarkets, I would also go and visit the local Christian bookstore and start selling books to them because they would also be out of the best-selling titles. I got to see some of the most incredibly nice stores—and also some of the junkiest stores you can ever imagine.

Somewhere in all of that God touched my heart, so when Debby and I went back to the Twin Cities, we felt we should look into opening a store of our own.

What do you miss now about not being directly involved in retail?

Relationships with people, with customers. Our store was right next door to a Catholic church. Some of our most active customers were charismatic Catholic believers, and every week when they got a paycheck, they were in to buy a stack of books to give away to friends.
Seeing how seriously they took that made us feel like it was part of our ministry to make sure those books that they needed were there. We decided we weren’t going to limit ourselves to just being a store that demanded people come to our door. We felt that, wherever we were, that’s where the store was, so we would go out and be involved in the community in all kinds of different ways—concerts, radio and TV.

You made an impact quickly—how?

There was a successful regional chain, but we decided to focus on a particular niche that they weren’t as up-to-date on as they could have been, and that was Christian music. In the mid-’80s it was an exploding area.

As a strategy, we created two loss leaders to get people in the door, Amy Grant’s Unguarded and Petra’s Beat the System. Word got out, and we had tons of people coming in, so it didn’t take long before we became very known as a music store. Ministries would pull in from all over the country on tour buses, stopping at our store and buying accompaniment tracks—we stocked 5,000.

Were you able to share some of your ideas with others?

At that point in time, the Gospel Music Association (GMA) was starting to look into how to get more retailers involved in expanding their sales with Christian music. They decided to have a store representative on their advisory board, and I served a three-year term. That was a great experience. We were a Parable store, and I was also asked to be on their music selection committees.
So, I’d find myself in Nashville two or three times a year, and we’d get to hear the artists, hear their hearts and the music well before most stores would, and that really helped us be a better store.

How did you connect with your fellow retailers?

We got together with a group of other people in our region that also operated stores. We were far enough from each other geographically so that we weren’t competing for each other’s customers. We would go visit each other’s stores every quarter, and we’d go through and evaluate how the layout was and make recommendations to one another on how we might do things differently. That was invaluable; people were generally doing a good job, but little things can make all the difference in the world.

You came into the industry in its boom years?

Yes, I can recall going to CBA’s summer show, and there’d be 14,000 to 15,000 people. We couldn’t anticipate how things would change so drastically. … Christian sales centered on the independent Christian bookstore. Target or Wal-Mart were hardly around.

What do you think about the changes since then?

It’s certainly gotten more challenging, with so many other options for buying Christian products. I remember people coming to me and saying their church was thinking of opening a bookstore right down the street. I’d be thinking, “What am I doing wrong?” but I came to realize it had nothing to do with that. Their people needed resources, and they weren’t shopping at Christian bookstores.

At first I took great offense, but now I see it’s really part of God’s master plan, of how He’s going to fulfill His Great Commission. I firmly believe even though it’s challenging for independent stores to have to deal with all these different places that are now competing more, the Lord is not going to lead them into that business unless He provides a way for them to succeed. 

What’s the biggest single change you have seen?

Probably the availability of product—and that is not a bad thing. Most people say that only one in 10 regular churchgoers shops in a Christian retail store. Well, I still want to see those others fed, whether that’s through Wal-Mart or Books-A-Million or a church store.

What hasn’t changed?

We still have passion. We still have people that really believe they can really make a difference—and there are some incredible stores out there.

Of course, there has been a lot of discouragement in recent years, but I would have to say, going back to the International Christian Retail Show in July, I felt as if the industry had turned a corner. … There’s been a great purging. Some have closed their doors—and, frankly, needed to. But I feel that there’s a new kind of a thing that’s happening. It’s hard to even quantify it, but it’s the sense that, by gosh, we have been through challenging times, but we’re going to make it. 

Is passion alone going to be enough?

Clearly we need to see more professionalism and business acumen than maybe there was in the past, in some places—and we are seeing a lot of that. Less than 10 years ago, I remember seeing numbers like only 33% of the stores were computerized, for instance. Now there’s not too many stores out there that are doing their inventory by book cards anymore. And there are all sorts of other tools to help them run things tighter and closer, and that’s all good.

Does the industry have the leadership it needs?

I think it exists, but it is fragmented in so many different directions. Someone described it as like herding cats. I think at some point before too long God is going to make it clear to everybody that we can’t be wildcats, that we need each other, and the sooner that we learn that we’re all better working together, the better we will be.

Right now, I think we’ve got an industry where we all have got to get on our knees and pray. There needs to come the day when the industry is willing to come back together and work for the common good.

What is Christian Retailing’s role?

I think to be a champion. A reporter. A helper. And through all of those things, an encourager. There’s been so much bad news recently, that it’s been hard for anybody to feel very encouraged. Obviously you have to report the news, good or bad, but hopefully in a manner that helps everybody find their way more clearly.

I have loved Christian Retailing since I first had my store.

What plans do you have as publisher?

I haven’t walked in with a specific agenda. I think it’s a new day for all of us in the industry, and we want to be more open than ever before to find ways to help lead the process along. 

How has The Gathering grown from a church bookstore event to a broader industry event?

We started a program a few years ago specifically to help church bookstores, but we realized that it seemed odd somehow to have an event with great training and resources, and tell some stores that they couldn’t come. 

We had more and more nonchurch stores saying they would like to attend, so we felt like it was kind of a call of God to open it up to any store that needs help. That’s just an extension of who we already are.

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